CAIRO, 13 July 2004 — Newly appointed Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmad Nazif announced yesterday he has chosen ministers for all Cabinet portfolios, the official Middle East News Agency said. “We are done with choosing the Cabinet,” Nazif was quoted by MENA as saying.
President Hosni Mubarak gave the information portfolio to former Tourism Minister Mamdouh El-Beltagi as part of a government shake-up, MENA reported. It was the second confirmed appointment in the new Cabinet which Nazif started forming on Saturday, a day after Prime Minister Atef Obeid resigned.
Former information minister and close presidential adviser Safwat El-Sherif resigned his post last month after running Egypt’s state-dominated media since 1982.
Nazif met with more than 20 ministers yesterday to inform them of their positions at the headquarters of the ruling National Democratic Party.
The new prime minister, a technocrat who held the post of minister of telecommunications and technology in the former government, said further consultations “will continue”.
Nazif is expected to hand over the final list of ministers to Mubarak before making an official announcement — expected today.
However, the makeup of his new government a likely mix of the old guard and a younger generation linked to the son of Mubarak. More than half the Cabinet was expected to return to their posts, although it had already been announced that Ahmed Abul Gheit, Egypt’s former ambassador to the United Nations, would replace Ahmed Maher at the crucial Foreign Ministry post.
The priority for the new government will be the dire state of the economy in Egypt, where growth has slowed, unemployment skyrocketed and the value of the local currency plummeted.
Press reports said that the ministers of defense and interior — Mohammed Hussein Tantawi and Habib Al-Adly — would keep their jobs, while other names on Nazif’s Cabinet shortlist were people close to the president’s son Gamal.
At least five of the new faces were expected to be drawn from the ruling National Democratic Party’s powerful political committee, which Gamal heads.
Outgoing Foreign Trade Minister Yusef Boutros Ghali has been tapped to become finance minister, while Rashid Mohammed Rashid, 48, a wealthy businessmen and associate of Gamal, was expected to become minister of trade and industry, the state MENA news agency said.
Another Gamal associate — 41-year-old economist Mahmud Mohieddin — was tipped to head the new Investment Ministry, while the education portfolio was expected to go to another associate of the president’s son, academic Ahmed Gamal Eddin Mussa.
The younger Mubarak does not hold any government position and authorities have poured cold water on suggestions that he is being groomed to succeed his 76-year-old father, who was recently operated in Germany on for a slipped disc. However, Gamal has become increasingly influential, playing a role in the vanguard of a new generation which has called for greater political freedoms and other reforms.
Several members of the new Cabinet such as Mohieddin and Rashid obtained their post-graduate degrees from foreign universities, including in the United States and Britain. Others expected to keep their jobs were Petroleum Minister Sameh Fahmy and Civil Aviation Minister Ahmed Shafiq.
The government-owned daily Al-Ahram reported that the new government was expected to be sworn in today after Mubarak met with Nazif yesterday to finalize its makeup. After their morning talks, the new premier held one-on-one meetings with members of his shortlist at the headquarters of the ruling party.
